The catalog of read-only checks vault_lint.py runs over agent-shaped MemoryVault entries. Each check is (entry) -> list[Finding] where a Finding carries check_id, severity (error / warn / info), entry_path, message, and a suggestion. The lint never mutates the vault — it surfaces candidate fixes for operator review (A3). It targets only entries carrying the core frontmatter trio (kind + status + created); the operator's free-form personal notes are skipped.

Question	Answer
What runs the checks?	harness/skills/memory/scripts/vault_lint.py (the check registry + runner).
How do I see findings?	python3 harness/skills/memory/scripts/vault_lint.py --format text (or --format json).
Which entries get linted?	Only agent-shaped entries (core frontmatter trio kind+status+created); free-form personal notes are skipped (DC-3). The idea cards in personal/ideas/ are out of scope entirely — see below.
Does the lint ever edit the vault?	vault_lint.py itself never does — read-only / surface-only (DC-1), reports + suggests only. The composed /memory lint engine layered on top (lint.py, auto-organization part 3 task 7) has one repair, for one narrow, safe case — a mis-cased wikilink with a single unambiguous target — and writes it only when you pass --apply. The nightly dream cycle counts those links and repairs none. Every other finding, from either layer, stays surfaced-only by design.
Where does the schema come from?	save.py — the lint imports its validators + FRONTMATTER_FIELD_ORDER / REQUIRED_FRONTMATTER_FIELDS so the two can't drift (DC-2).
How do I run a full audit report?	See Audit the vault.
How do I also get orphans, contradictions, and a quality score?	/memory lint (harness/skills/memory/scripts/lint.py) composes this catalog's supersede-cycle / supersede-fork / dangling-supersession / kind-taxonomy checks with graph_snapshot.orphans() and a per-note quality score, on demand or via the nightly dream cycle — see the memory skill's /memory lint section.
Related pages	Audit the vault

14 checks run over every agent-shaped entry. Severities: error (off-spec — needs a fix) · warn (drift or smell — review). The lint exits 0 regardless; findings are advisory.

Check ID	Severity	What it checks	Suggested-fix shape
required-field	error	A required frontmatter field is missing: kind, status, created, updated or slug (save.REQUIRED_FRONTMATTER_FIELDS). Every other field in the locked order is optional; tags became optional with the card backfill (agentm-vault plan 06), which omits an empty list.	Add the missing field in the locked order.
kebab-case	error	kind / slug / group path segments / each tag are kebab-case (^[a-z0-9-]+$; group is /-joined kebab segments).	Rename the offending value to kebab-case.
field-order	warn	The present frontmatter fields appear in the locked order — the card's order (agentm-vault § The card, the read block then the machine block): title, kind, summary, why, importance, status, lifecycle, lifecycle_since, filing_confidence, source, source_url, source_id, source_fetched, trust, created, updated, tags, related, supersedes, superseded_by, project, task, arc, group, lifecycle_tier, heat_pin, slug, fingerprint, occurrences, derived_from, via, surface, instructions, review_flags, read straight from save.FRONTMATTER_FIELD_ORDER so the two can't drift. The card backfill (agentm-vault plan 06) brought the corpus to this order.	Reorder frontmatter to the locked order.
slug-filename	warn	The slug value matches the filename stem.	Rename the file to <slug>.md, or fix the slug field.
date-format	error / warn	created / updated are a YYYY-MM-DD date or an ISO timestamp on that day — the capture door writes the instant (error if neither); updated is on or after created, compared by day (warn if earlier).	Set a valid date or timestamp / make updated's day ≥ created's day.
placeholder-value	warn	A frontmatter value still holds an unfilled template option-list (a | b | c).	Replace with the single chosen value.
schema-drift	warn	A frontmatter key is not in the locked schema (unknown key).	Remove the key, or confirm an intentional schema addition.
wikilink-resolution	error	Every [[link]] in the body resolves to a file in the enclosing Obsidian vault — by filename stem, by relative path, or by an aliases: entry, vault-wide.	Fix the target, create the note, or remove the link.
supersede-integrity	error / warn	superseded_by: and supersedes: each resolve to a real entry (error if dangling; a source version <id> at <version> is left alone); a supersedes: target still active on the lifecycle axis warns.	Fix the reference, or set the target's lifecycle: superseded and name the successor in its superseded_by:.
supersede-cycle	error	A supersedes: chain loops back on itself (A supersedes B ... supersedes A).	Break the cycle — fix the supersedes target on one entry in the chain.
supersede-fork	warn	Two or more entries both claim supersedes: the same target.	Keep exactly one successor; reconcile the others (merge, retarget, or drop the extra supersedes).
dangling-supersession	warn	A superseded memory (lifecycle: superseded, or the pre-contract status: superseded) with no lineage: no superseded_by: of its own, and no entry's supersedes: points here.	Add superseded_by: <successor> on this note (and supersedes: on the successor), or revert the state if nothing replaced it.
kind-taxonomy	warn	kind is not in kind_registry.py's KNOWN_KINDS registry.	Use a registered kind, or add this one to KNOWN_KINDS if it's a genuine addition.
arc-registry	error	arc (when present — most entries carry none) is kebab-case and a recognized slug in arc_registry.py's KNOWN_ARCS.	Rename to kebab-case, or add the slug to KNOWN_ARCS.

Anchor files (_index, _summary) are exempt from the kebab slug check. The _idea-incubator/ research files and the idea cards in personal/ideas/ are skipped by these checks too, because neither is save.py-shaped — see below for what, if anything, covers each one now. Scheduled / unattended runs of this raw check suite are deferred to V6; the nightly composed run (orphans + quality score + the four contradiction/taxonomy checks above + a count of the mis-cased links --apply would repair) ships today via dream.py's _stage_lint(), as a report that applies nothing — see /memory lint.

The bespoke idea-ledger pass that used to run here — incubator_lint.py, checking the _idea-incubator/ research files and the hand-kept Ideas.md against their own shapes, automatically at --scope all or alone via --scope incubator — retired in agentm-vault part 13, along with the two surfaces it checked. --scope incubator retired with it: vault_lint.py --scope incubator now refuses at the argument parser, the same as any other unrecognized --scope value, since incubator is gone from the set the flag accepts (all, always-load, projects, memory).

Ideas.md is generated over the idea cards in personal/ideas/ by the dreaming binary now, and it holds the file's shape itself, with its own tests (daemon/internal/dreaming/ideas_test.go) — this catalog was never going to be the thing that kept checking it. The _idea-incubator/ research files have no lint pass of their own at the moment; the incubator skeleton and its researcher sub-agent are still there, waiting on their own follow-up.

The idea cards themselves are not walked as entries here either — personal/ sits outside every scope in the table above. Their shape is held by a gate instead: check-card-shape's second walk reads every card in personal/ideas/ and names the file and field when a note there is not type: idea, has no area:, carries lifecycle or lifecycle_since, carries a status other than active, or has a dismissed: that is not a day. It reports until the ideas move's --finish writes memory/.ideas-surface-complete, then enforces (see CI gates reference § check-card-shape). One resolution still reaches into the folder: a duplicate note's superseded_by: personal/ideas/<stem>.md, pointing at the idea it was folded into, resolves against the folder's filenames (build_model, vault_lint.py:403) so supersede-integrity does not flag it as dangling — added to model.slugs only, never linted as an entry in its own right.

• Audit the vault — the operator recipe that runs these checks and reads the report.
• harness/skills/memory/SKILL.md's /memory lint section — the composed engine (orphans, contradictions, quality score, mis-cased-wikilink auto-repair) built on top of this catalog.